After life, there is love
by A Hopeless Romantic
Summary: A continuation of the Angel series, post 'Not fade Away'. Angel's love for his family must lead him through new challanges. HIATUS


A lone figure stood in the darkness, His clothes were ripped, claw marks covered his skin and blood streamed from all body parts. He was looking up into the stars, searching for something. He was a champion after all. He had faced the greatest battle of his or anyone else's life and survived. But he was alone. There was only one left now.

Body's blanketed the area. He looked to his side and stared at the large hotel. 'Hyperion Hotel' was written in bold on the sign. As he stared he began to reminisce. He remembered them all. Wesley at the table pouring over the books. Fred researching over the Internet. Gunn taking a few swings with his favorite axe. Lorne trying to talk to someone about his last client who sang the Beatle's so badly that he should be bound and gagged. And her. He could not forget her. Cordelia would be doing everything and nothing. It always seemed like nothing to anyone else, but to him, it was everything.

"Reminiscing?" a voice said from behind him. Angel turned swiftly, sword poised to skewer the speaker. How was it, he wondered that he had not heard the intruder, how could he not smell him.

"Sorry, I tend to do that a lot." The intruder said. He was clothed in white suit pants and the same colored jacket. His shirt was purple though and he had shoes of the same color. He seemed completely normal except that his eyes kept changing color. And the tail. There was the tail. It was long, sinewy, and silvery and whipped about the area.

"Who are you?" Angel growled. He had been though a lot and now was not the time for him to have patience.

"The question is, who are you?" the intruder replied. "I might have answer if you are interested. But first a story, a familiar story. See, in the early 1800's, there was a creature, a vampire. Horrible guy; killed and massacred the people. He was known as the Scourge of Europe. But while in Romania, he met up with some gypsies. They cursed him with a soul. He was horrified by the consuming guilt and ran in to hiding. Now some time ago, he met up with a Slayer, some one who protects the world from vampires and the sort. She fell in love with our cursed vampire. They got too cuddly and he lost his sold. Something about perfect happiness." The intruder said shaking hiss head. "Any way, he was a soulless vampire again and created hell. Big mess. But then he gets his soul back and decides to leave the slayer to prevent that from happening again. He comes to Los Angeles and..."

"Yeah, I know the story. If you've come to tell me that I am a champion and that you get visions of people in trouble who I am supposed to help, you're kind of late." Angel interrupted, sword still held firmly.

"No, no. I'm not here for that. I am here to tell you how the story ends." Angel lowered his sword a little. He was starting to get interested. He suddenly raised his sword again.

"Tell me who you are first and what you are doing here?" he said.

"Does that really matter?" the intruder said eyeing the streets littered with corpses "After all you've been through, I would have figured that you didn't care any more about such trivial things."

"I said tell me who you are and what your doing here." Angel said raising his voice. His patience was wearing thin.

"Okay, fine. But why don't you first tell me what happened here." Angel held firm, but then slowly lowered his sword. He thought that he could take on the new person without a problem and he probably wasn't going to get jumped.

"This army appeared after we took out the senior partner representatives. Came at us full force; even had a dragon. Only Gunn, Illyria, Spike and me were left. Gunn was nearly dead; he didn't last ten minutes when the army arrived. We fought hard, but not hard enough. The demons that had finished Gunn swarmed Illyria. She fought and defeated most of them but couldn't carry on. When she fell it was just Spike and me. We hacked and slashed through all but the last group of demons that hid in the shadows. That's when Spike fell. Gutted through the back. I faced them and slew every last one. Now this is all that's left of them," he said pointing to half a bloody arm that was covered in blueish-green liquid "and I am all that's left."

The other creature/man looked at Angel.

"Hmm. Interesting. You said something about a dragon though. I don't see any dragon corpse around." he asked. Angel looked around the area. He was right. There was no dragon to be seen. He fell silent, listening. He could smell it, hear the flapping of its wings. Then came a roar. It was coming from the Hyperion Hotel. The damn dragon was at his hotel.

"No way is that thing messing up my furniture." Angel muttered as he ran towards the hotel. The other man had left his mind. All he thought about was making sure that this was finished. He was going to ensure that no creature of Wolfram and Hart's army was going to live. Thoughts of his friends' deaths flooded his mind as he dashed up the stairwell to the roof. As he burst through the door he saw it. Big, scaly and ugly.

"You're going to make a nice suitcase or pair of shoes." he said. There was no mischievous gleam in his eyes or funny smirk. Just the thought of finally finishing this was in his mind.

The dragon roared again. It walked around the side of the building and then came towards Angel. Angel dodged the first blast of fire and leapt to the beast's head. Aiming straight for the left eye he thrust his sword forward, deep into the creatures eye. The dragon screamed in pain and shook its head, throwing Angel to the ground. He leapt up and started towards the beast. He hacked at the scaly head but to no avail. The dragon reared it head and blasted out fire again. This time Angel wasn't so lucky. As he leapt away, the blast seared his left side; burning of part of his shirt and fusing the rest of his left pant leggings with his skin. Angel screamed in terror and pain but still rose. But the dragon just pushed him down and stomped its leg on him. Angel felt the bones that weren't broken in his body crack. As the dragon applied more pressure, Angel screamed in pain. He grabbed his sword and jabbed the creature's foot. The dragon howled again and removed its foot. As it limped back the creature tripped and fell to the ground. Angel got up and crawled towards the beast. He crawled to its underbelly and held his sword up high. With every last ounce of strength in his body he yelled and drove the sword into the beast's heart. The dragon cried in anguish and collapsed.

Angel stood still for a second and stared at the creature. He stared down the alley at the corpse of almost every known demon and his fallen comrades. Then the light faded from his eyes and he fell down dead.


End file.
